Friday

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to a friendly missive from little birdie we'll call Ron Aroundsue Your Mama learned that hilariously high camp television personality Ross Mathews and his long time man-friend, stylist Salvador Camarena, along with their pooches Louise and Mijo, have moved to a glassy, canyon view house in Los Angeles, CA, a notable event both men have recently blogged and/or Tweeted about.

Since Your Mama's invitation to the house warming party must have gotten lost in the damn mail—uhm...yes, Hello, Ross—we can't reveal any details about the out and proud couple's new digs except that it appears in video to be substantially more spacious and much more contemporary than the itty-bitty 1940s bungalow in L.A.'s Atwater Village 'hood that Mister Ross sold in early May (2013) for $676,500.

Mister Mathews, an inveterate and intensely focused pop culture maven of the highest magnitude, started up his ladder of Showbiz fame and fortune in the early Aughts as a lowly intern on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. His effervescent personality, girlishly high-pitched voice, and brutally self-deprecating sense of humor got Mister Ross noticed by the powers that be who, after a fun-filled last minute fill-in guest spot on the show, hired him on as "Ross The Intern." As "Ross The Intern" Mister Ross honed his schtick as a fun-loving and infectiously fruity correspondent who giddily covered movie premieres, awards shows and other such important Tinseltown trivialities.*

Since his intern days Mister Ross, now in his early 30s, has become a bit of a cable television staple. He lost 40 pounds on Celebrity Fit Club in 2007, was a correspondent for the celebrity gossip program The Insider, and hosted the GSN game show Big Saturday Night. He occasionally appears on the long-running Days of Our Lives soap story, he frequently fawns over celebrities on red carpet events for E!, and he pops up just about every week on sassy pants comedian and entertainment industry mogul Chelsea Handler's eponymous late night pop culture gab fest.

Mister Ross recently published what Your Mama imagines will be the first of several memoir driven tomes, Man Up! Tales of My Delusional Self-Confidence. This fall Mister Mathews will host Hello Ross, his very own interactive late night television chat show that aims to laud and applaud celebrity-driven pop culture rather than tear it down with snarky remarks about failed fashion choices, arrogant douche-baggery and—ahem—poor day-core.

Property records show Mister Mathews picked up his petite pad in Atwater Village—an increasingly hip and hipster inhabited area sandwiched between Los Feliz and Glendale—in January 2010 for $530,000. A few quick calculations on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus tells us that Mister Mathews turned a $146,500 profit, not counting almost 3.5 years of carrying costs, updates and upgrades, real estate fees and—as per listing information—professional decorating by liptastic nice-gay decorator/persnickety house flipping Bravolebrity Jeff Lewis.

The wee, single-story bungalow has two bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms in just 1,034 square feet, according to online marketing materials we managed to ferret up out of the interweb. A tiny front porch with a tomato red front door opens to a small foyer—a minuscule vestibule, really—that sits between a reasonably roomy living room and an eat-in kitchen.

There are hardwood floors in the living room (and the bedrooms) and red clay tiles with decorotive insets in the kitchen that set off the white Shaker style cabinets and cream colored tile counter tops with Fiestaware-ish back splash. Upgraded stainless steel appliances include a commercial-style four-burner range and a side-by-side fridge/freezer flanked by a small built-in housekeeping desk and an open laundry/pantry that connects through to the outdoor living spaces. We loathe how the cabinets stop just shy of the ceiling but at least Misters Ross and Camarena had the good sense not to stuff that slim space with wicker baskets and faux-greenery.

The compact master bedroom has one small closet and two access points to the backyard through what appear to be original 1940s wood and glass doors. We can live with a ceiling fan. They have a southern California practicality that we understand. But we really wish the Misters Ross and Camarena replaced it with something less dainty. Is that fan really Jeff Lewis approved? Anyhoo, the door to the smaller second bedroom appears to have been used by the misters of the house as an office/creative space and indeed has a glass panel on which appears the words "ART STUDIO" have been stenciled.

A detached two car garage at the rear of the property was transformed a year or two ago by Jeff Lewis on his eponymous spin off reality show Interior Therapy with Jeff Lewis into a fully finished den/guest room with a concrete floors, crown molding, a moody palette of grays of browns, and a pair of mirror doored storage closets. Two sets of French doors open to the driveway cum dining terrace. Gray horizontal strip fencing and high hedges ring a verdant and separate but adjoining area of the backyard where there's a thick carpet of well-watered grass and an above-ground spa just outside the master bedroom beneath a vine-laden trellis.

Property records reveal Mister Mathews still owns a 1,130 square foot condominium in Pasadena (CA) that he scooped up in May 2006 for $430,000 and last July (2012) Mister Mathews paid $223,000 for a 1,233 square foot house with two bedrooms, one bathroom and a kidney-shaped swimming pool on a tight corner lot on a fairly busy street in Palm Springs (CA).

NOTE (Later same day): Thanks to the always in the know Lucy Spillerguts Your Mama learned that Mister Mathews and Mister Camanero decamped Atwater Village to the rugged hills of Glendale (CA) where they moved into a 1970s contemporary perched privately on a steep slope at the tail end of a long, serpentine, and semi-private driveway. Listing details Your Mama dug up show the renovated residence sits on more than three quarters of an acre with three bedrooms and three bathrooms in nearly 3,800 square feet spread over three floors. Other amenities include: an open concept main living/dining/kitchen that opens to a wrap around deck that cantilevers over the hill side with long canyon views; an attached two car garage with direct entry; a penthouse level master suite with adjacent office; and a lower level game room with built-in bar and wine cellar. The property was last listed at just under $1.1 million.

Tuesday

According to the celebrity gossip peeps at Celebuzz, Brazilian bra and pantie supermodel Adriana Lima listed her Midtown Manhattan condo crib for $5.5 million. Property records show the smoldering brunette picked up the 2,200 square foot apartment at the full service Metropolitan Tower in late 2003 for $1,995,000.

Listing details show the 42nd floor spread has two bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms plus floor to ceiling windows that provide a through-the-buildings northern view of Central Park. The well-equipped condo, which has month common charges and taxes that rack up to $5,404, also has a handy-dandy home automation system that conveniently controls the lighting, audio visual equipment, temperature settings, and electronic window shades at the mere touch of a button.

Miz Lima and her Serbian professional basketball player husband, Marko Jarić, and their two young children live primarily in Miami, FL where in January 2010 they shelled out exactly $9,000,000 for a nearly 7,500 square foot fixer-upper bay front mansion on the gated and heavily guarded Indian Creek Island enclave. Some of their high profile neighbors on Indian Creek Island include multi-billionaire businessman Carl Icahn, Latin crooner Julio Inglesias, steel magnate Leroy Schecter, hedge fund honcho Eddie Lampert, and Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula.

Saturday

...(via the New York Observer) that Kanye West wants 4.5 million bucks for his Big Apple bachelor pad, a 2,300-ish square foot two unit combination crib in SoHo that he had decked out in austere, haute-minimalist style by maverick Italian architect Claudio Silvestrin in 2007. Property records we picked at and perused reveal he paid a total of $3,140,000 in two separate transactions for the fourth floor apartments.*

Mister West's East Coast pied-a-terre apparently popped up on a New York City-centric real estate listing service but quickly disappeared in—you got it—a proverbial New York minute. A subsequent report in today's New York Post reveals that the 21-time Grammy winner's top producing real estate agent hosted an invite-only open house yesterday for some of the city's top brokers. There are—not surprisingly—"more than a dozen" pair of high-cost sneakers in the master closet and—more surprisingly—several small statues that one broker who toured the space described to The Post look like "an angel, or a little boy Cupid." Oh dear.

Other high profile residents of the full-service building include actor Julianna Margulies and model/t.v. presenter Padma Lakshmi who records show paid nearly eight million clams for her two-unit penthouse pad in early 2012.

Mister West also owns a contemporary, art-filled residence in the Hollywood Hills he's been trying to unload on and off since at least May, 2010 when it was briefly on the open market for $3,995,000. The multi-story hillside house is currently priced at $3,150,000.

Mister West reportedly also maintains an apartment in Paris near his fashion world b.f.f. Riccardo Tisci, the very same Givenchy creative director who just bought a West Village townhouse from high brow performance artist Marina Abramovic and with whom Mister West has been salaciously rumored to share something more than just Platonic. Whatever the case—and who cares, really?—the tabloids and celebrity gossip blogs went berserk this week with unconfirmed reports that the newly divorced Miz Kardashian has agreed to live in Paris with her baby daddy for at least three months after the birth of their bundle of joy. Hard to believe her mother/manager would allow that, but K.K. is a grown woman, and can do what she likes right? Anyways...

In February (2013), Mister West's soon-to-be baby momma Kim Kardashian shelled out $9,000,000 for a 9,000 square foot faux-Tuscan/mock-Med mish-mosh macmansion in the guard gated Beverly Crest community in Los Angeles. Call us a cynic—and we've certainly been called worse—but Your Mama can't imagine Mister West, a man who fancies he has posh and cutting edge taste, actually living in such a downright ordinary macmansion any more than we imagine our mean ol' pussy cat Sugar speaks Cantonese. We shall see, butter beans, we shall see.

*Mister West bought the first and larger of the two apartments in December 2004 for $1,890,000 and the smaller adjacent unit in February 2006 for $1,250,000.photos: Claudio Silvestrin

Famously hairy chested, and—ahem—decidedly cheese ball actor and singer David Hasselhoff recently sold his former family estate in Encino, CA, for $3,549,000 and, as was revealed by the celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ, coughed up $1,950,000 to buy himself a big new mock-Med macmansion bachelor pad in a small, guard-gated enclave in the affluent L.A. suburb of Calabasas (CA).

Online resources show the 5,767 square foot residence—on and off the market since November 2006!—has five bedrooms and six bathrooms. The Baywatch babe's new abode also has a double-height foyer for impressing guests and Chinese food delivery men, a sunken formal living room with fireplace and double height ceiling, a formal dining room and an adjacent center island kitchen, a family room with wet bar, and a office/library loft that overlooks the formal living room.

The 1.54 acre grounds include numerous patios, a waterfall equipped swimming pool and spa, built-in barbecue center, lush semi-tropical landscaping, a grassy play yard and a huge concrete pad with basketball nets but no guide lines or whatever those linear markings on the basketball court are called.

Thanks to the New York Observer we learned that wildly successful television super-producer Darren Star (Sex and the City, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills, 90210 and the reprise 90210) sold his swank New York City pied-à-terre at the glitzy Trump International Hotel and Tower on Columbus Circle for $13 million to the family of shopping mall magnate Frank Lowy, otherwise known as second richest man in Australia.

Mister Star acquired the 35th floor spread in 2005 for $6.1 million so the thirteen million clam sale price represents an enviable and elephantine return on his real estate investment.

Listing details show the L-shaped, 3,059 square foot corner apartment has three bedrooms and 4.5 marble bathrooms, including a master suite with two bathrooms and private study/sitting room. The living/dining space stretches almost forty feet with a built-in wet bar in the dining area and there's a stacked washer/dryer in the corridor that connects the living room and the compact but generously windowed eat-in kitchen.

Mister Star owns (at least) one very luxurious residence in Los Angeles, a 6,808 square foot residence on a prime street in Bel Air that he bought in November 2005 for $6,850,000, filled with a small museum's worth of name brand contemporary artworks and had photographed for the March 2012 issue of Architectural Digest.listing photo and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

The long-legged blond at Trulia Luxe Living reported this week that sitcom superstars Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) finally sold their published, city view house in L.A.'s Bird Streets 'hood—where are the streets are named after birds, natch. They hoisted the 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom residence on the open market in September 2011 for $12,650,000 and last week at a steep discount for $9,970,000 million.

We first heard it from the ever industrious kids at Curbed that Her Pop Music Majesty Madonna has done sold her 6 bedroom and 8 bathroom duplex digs at Harperley Hall on New York City's Upper West Side. Not surprisingly, the deep pocketed buyer, identified as Deepak Narula, is a prodigiously rich hedge fund fat cat.

The still fit as a fiddle and strikingly well preserved mid-50s Material Girl first listed her approximately 6,000 square foot multi-unit combination spread in November 2012 with a $23,500,000 asking price. So the celebrity real estate scuttlebutt goes Mister Hedge Fund paid quite a bit less than the last and final $19,995,000 price tag.

The sprawling apartment was decorated with Art Deco zing style by her dilettantish brother Christopher—now a shoe designer—and was photographed in 2007 in all its art-filled glory for Architectural Digest.
The celebrity real estate leprechauns haven't been so kind to Madge on the West Coast where she hasn't had much luck yet unloading her Beverly Hills estate either off market—with a rumored $28 million asking price—or on the open market where it's currently listed at $22.5 million.

Madonna continues to own a horse farm in the Hamptons—bought from Calvin's ex-wife Kelly Klein in late 2009—and the near mythic Upper East Side triple-wide townhouse with private garage she bought in 2009 for $32,000,000 and spent heaven only knows how much on extensive renovations that included penthouse level expansion and the addition of roof deck.